Waterhouse completed The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius in 1883. It is a large oil painting, about 117 by 202 cm, and it is now in the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. It shows the Roman emperor Honorius in his palace, feeding the birds on the rug in front of him while a row of robed councillors waits for his attention.
The chicken named Rome
The painting seems to nod to an anecdote told by the Byzantine historian Procopius. When Honorius was told that Rome had perished, the story goes, he was at first shocked, because he thought the news was about his favorite hen, which he had named Roma. When he learned that the Visigoths had sacked the city, he was relieved that it was only the city. Most historians treat the tale as apocryphal, but it has survived for 1,500 years because it captures how Honorius's reign has been remembered.
What is in the room
Honorius sits at the left in a maroon robe with a dish in his hand, ignoring the pale-robed advisers who are bowing in a line across the marble floor. Hens and pigeons crowd around his feet, a bird perches on the cabinet behind him, and a tall column and green curtain frame the scene. The contrast between the glittering patterned floor and the empty business of the court is the joke.
Little-known facts
- Honorius was named Western Roman emperor as a boy of about ten after the death of his father, Theodosius I, and reigned from 393 to 423.
- His reign saw the Western Empire invaded by foreign tribes and the city of Rome sacked by the Visigoths in 410.
- Waterhouse was only in his early thirties when he painted it, and its dry humor is quite different from the romantic heroines of his later career.
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